Another plugin that will allow you to optimize your database is WP-Optimize.

Choose off WordPress solutions instead of plugins when possible 03:50

For example, David and Tim both have e-commerce websites. With e-commerce websites, you’ll need a solution for customer service. There are many plugins out there that could handle this and it seems like the easiest option.

However, what really happens is that a new database table is created every time someone opens a ticket, responds to a message, etc.

David and Tim use Help Scout for support forms. This helps to keep all this data from slowing down the website.

Affiliate programs can also create a lot of data on your website, so you’ll need to use the other techniques mentioned to clean out your database tables and reduce database bloat.

Clean out database tables from plugins that are no longer used 06:33

When you’re building a website, you might try out a few different plugins to see which you like the best.

Usually you will keep the one that fits the best and then deactivate and delete the rest. If this is not the case, make sure to go back and clean up plugins that you aren’t using.

Once you have deleted the plugin (or even every few months), go in and look for the data created by deleted plugins. Even though you have deactivated and deleted plugins, they will leave data behind.

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